One of the most famous sore-loser gripes of a political candidate came on November 7th, 1962, when Richard Nixon, after losing by five points to incumbent Pat Brown in California’s gubernatorial election, rambled on and on at the Beverly Hilton, and bitterly concluded: “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentleman, this is my last press conference.” This tirade, more than five decades ago, is instructive for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the 37th President of the United States, who died in 1994 and was given an upbeat eulogy by a shameless President Bill Clinton, is once again (looking up, looking down) having an historical renaissance—some saying that Watergate (not just the break-in but every crime that’s under that umbrella) was a “minor” scandal compared to those of Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump. Beats me: as a teenager and young adult I thought Nixon was a lousy president, not just for continuing LBJ’s Vietnam escalation, but Kent State, his wage and price controls, nods to environmentalism and welfare reform. He did end the draft and lower the voting age to 18, but when he resigned in 1974 he bequeathed an awful economy to the hapless Jerry Ford (who, despite pardoning Nixon nearly defeated Jimmy Carter in 1976), leading most historians to say the 1970s was a “lost economic decade.”
More significant today is what the mainstream/liberal/progressive media will complain about once 80-year-old Donald Trump is out of office. Unlike Nixon, who was 49 at the time of his “last press conference,” there won’t be a comeback for The Orange Man. New Yorker editor David Remnick, writing on Oct. 11th, offers his readers a greatest hits package of Trump jeremiads, all familiar, some valid, more just partisan grandstanding, and—like his “elite” colleagues—offers not a single Democratic (man or woman) who’ll reunite the country and salve its wounds.
It’s presumption of the highest order. He writes: “Signs of a midterm blue wave are everywhere, and yet it would be journalistic malpractice not to attach some nervous caveats to any prediction. Polls are sketchy. Campaigns have never been more subject to the desires of the wealthy.” It’s nervy of Remnick to evoke “journalistic malpractice,” as anyone who follows the nearly-daily distortions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and ABC News can recognize. And “the desires of the wealthy” aren’t confined to Republicans. Remnick, who says that Trump Derangement Syndrome began in 2016—that malady wasn’t yet common political parlance—isn’t sure how the nation will recover.
Echoing, he apparently believes, the views of the vast majority of Americans, he continues: “We are, collectively, on guard against undue optimism. Still, if the coming election does result in a blue wave, Trump will be faced with the fact of his diminishment. The rest of us will be faced with the wreckage.” He adds: “What more and more voters are coming to understand is how profoundly they have been betrayed.” Did Remnick come to that conclusion by imbibing “gold-standard” “sketchy polls”? Remnick’s so myopic that he’s reduced to listing Daily Beast (as trustworthy as Ben Shapiro or David French) headlines making fun of Trump’s inattention at meetings, “meltdowns” and ramblings that are often incoherent (in fairness, Biden’s detractors, including many Democrats in private, did the same thing).
Nowhere does Remnick mention the names Vance, Rubio, Mayor Pete, Newsom, Wes Moore (Maryland’s do-nothing governor), AOC or even Kamala Harris, possible victorious presidential candidates in two years who will presumably, at least to the TDS crowd, restore “normalcy” to the presidency. Trump, while bombastic, wasn’t so different from his predecessors, he just didn’t have a public filter (or chose to ignore one) on the Business of Government. Even though the Remnick crowd will pillory Vance or Rubio if one of them wins, it won’t have the hyperbole and or provide “The American Experiment Is Over” talking points for articles and TV appearances. Thinking about it, I expect a wave of retirements, one by one, from the older TDS spear-carriers, once the new president sets up shop in 2029.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023